Methods and systems for referrer-based payment system selection for internet-based merchants

ABSTRACT

A method for an internet-accessible content provider computer server that, in response to receiving request information from a referred user device for access to specific digital content subject to a fee, the server: (a) selects a particular payment system based on referrer information included in request information transmitted, (b) transmits to the selected payment system information indicative of the requested specific digital content and a request for approval of the user device for the corresponding fee for the digital content, (c) facilitating communication between the selected payment system and the user device, (d) based on receiving from the selected payment system an approval signal, transmitting the requested specific digital content to the user device.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This disclosure pertains to methods and systems useable by merchants forselecting payment systems for use with internet-based transactions.

BACKGROUND

The exceedingly large amount of content on the internet can only beexploited by normal users by means of internet-based search services.These systems in general generate an index of a part of the content ofthe internet and allow users to search this index for keywords orcombinations thereof. The index is often generated using so-calledsearch bats or spiders, i.e., software programs that causeinternet-connected computers to load, analyze and index web-content.Various ways exist for internet-based merchants or content providers toinfluence the operation of search bots for loading relevant content,skipping content that content owners do not want to be indexed, and toensure a fair distribution of the search resources between merchants. Inparticular, merchants can flag content that is not to be indexed orsearchable.

Similarly, means exist for merchants to make content available to searchbots that is actually not available for users without payment of a fee.These merchants often implement a pay-wall before the content can beaccessed by a user that is referred to such content by an internet-basedsearch service. In such instances, the search hots for the searchservice may access the full content, but users have to pay before theycan access such content. However, such an arrangement creates problemsof many users being annoyed if internet search results refer them tocontent that they actually cannot see or use, unless they accept toregister to the pay service and accept the respective purchase amount tobe paid immediately. The article of the online magazine “SearchEngineLand”, available athttp://searchengineland.com/time-for-google-to-rank-paid-news-content-better-220918,and hereby incorporated herein in its entirety, describes this problemin greater detail and various conventional techniques that attempt toovercome this problem.

One technique described in this article is for merchants to allowindexing of generally payed-for content and then allow users to accesssuch content for free for one or a limited number of content items, whensuch user is referred to such content from a particular internet searchservice. This technique is based on the hope of the merchants that userswill be subsequently interested in accessing more content from the samemerchants and will be willing to pay a fee for accessing such furthercontent. This technique is further described in greater detail in U.S.Pat. No. 9,043,942, which is incorporated herein in its entirety.

However, the disadvantages of this and similar techniques include that(a) despite the hopes of the merchants, users may not accept having topay for its further content, and (b) a reduction in potential income formerchants occurs due to lost revenue for the free access by users tocontent referred to by respective search engines. Moreover, in order tobuild or maintain its popularity with users and in order to avoidannoying such users confronted with paywalls, an internet-based searchservice provider may pressure merchants to offer free access to contentfor users that are referred by such search service provider.

Such disadvantages are compounded for both merchants and users due tooperations of conventional payment systems. Specifically, internet-basedmerchants often request a new user to register with their name and emailaddress. During the shopping process, the postal address for shippingnon-digital goods and credit card information is requested before apurchase is finally accepted by merchants. For digital content such ase-books, articles, images, audio or video, the process is very much thesame without the shipping postal address. Alternatives to providing acredit card are various other types of bank accounts. Anotheralternative is to transfer money to the merchants via, for example, avirtual currency, such as bitcoin.

Other existing payment systems offer a payment service to internee-basedmerchants and users which have benefits over the above-describedregistration methods. Some services include registration only at thepayment service, such as the service offered by PayPal Holdings, Inc.These services require only an email address to be provided to themerchants. The merchants then requests settlement of a bill from thepayment service and based on the mail address and the customer'sregistration, the payment service communicates with the customer andfinalizes the purchase. These and other payment service require asprerequisite that not only an agreement to pay before the purchase isfinalized, but in many systems payment must be received for the purchaseto be is finalized. For digital content this means, the credit card isdebited or the payment service transfers the purchase amount to theInternet-based merchants before the digital content is transmitted tothe customer.

Accordingly, known techniques fail to provide a means that serves boththe interests of the merchants and the users. For merchants, theirinterest is to request and receive payment for providing access tovaluable content from users who are referred to such content by referrerservices, such as internet-based search services, and for users, theirinterest is to be provided easy access to referred content, i.e.,without the hassle of registration or login, or making payment beforeaccess is granted to such content.

SUMMARY

By way of example, aspects of the present disclosure solve theabove-described problems created by conventional internet shoppingplatforms and payment systems. Specifically, the present disclosure isdirected to a content provider computer server that, in response toreceiving request information from a referred user device for access tospecific digital content subject to a fee, the server; (a) selects aparticular payment system based on referrer information included inrequest information, (b) transmits to the selected payment systeminformation indicative of the requested digital content and a requestfor approval of the user device for the corresponding fee for thedigital content, (c) facilitating communication between the selectedpayment system and the user device, and (d) based on receiving from theselected payment system an approval signal, transmitting the requestedspecific digital content to the user device. The computer-implementedmethod described in this disclosure advantageously exploits the abilityof referring entities to include information in a referring websitelink, i.e., URL address, which indicates the source of the referral.

The methods of the present disclosure are particularly advantageous whenused with easy-access payment systems, e.g., payment systems that do notrequire identification of the user, registration or login to the paymentsystem or content provider computer by a user associated with the userdevice. Such an improved payment process is described in, for example,European patent application publication no. EP2476087, which is owned bythe assignee of this patent application, and which such process: (a)stores an identification number of the user device; (b) stores thepurchase amount in relation to the identification number; (c) monitorsthe total amount of purchases by the user device; (d) receives a requestfrom the Internet-based merchant to account for the purchase amount; and(e) sends a request for settlement of at least a part of the totalamount of purchases to a user of the user device only when the totalamount of purchases exceeds a predefined value and/or after the expiryof a predefined time interval.

Such combination enables a user to make internet-based purchases using auser device for a purchase amount for which the buyer does not initiallyhave to settle. Information regarding purchases and purchase amounts aremaintained by the payment system in relation to a user deviceidentification, which does not include an identification of the user,nor does it need a registration, login or little other user interaction.

Accordingly, the computer-implemented disclosure advantageously solvesthe problem created by internet-based commerce by providing a methodthat serves both the interests of the content provider and the user inthat a payment can be requested by the content provider for all valuablecontent and users of referrer service, such as internet-based searchservices, will be able to conveniently pay or agree to pay acorresponding fee relative to other referrers or direct access, withoutregistration or login, identifying the user or delaying a user's accessto the content.

Another aspect of the present disclosure is the content providercomputer determining whether the identified referrer, who referred theuser device to the content, satisfies an easy-access criterion and ifso, selects an easy-access payment system.

A further aspect of the invention is the use of an easy-access paymentsystem in instances when (a) the identified referrer provided aninternet search service to the user device, (b) the paid content wasprovided by the content provider to the identified referrer for indexingand/or for making it available to an internet search service, and (c)the identified referrer and the content provider have an agreement forsuch easy access.

Another related aspect of the present disclosure is the content providercomputer server providing information to the payment system; wherein theinformation based on the identified referrer causes the payment systemto not to request settlement from the user of the user device prior toreceiving the requested content by, for example, increasing thepredetermined threshold for the total amount of purchases used by thepayment system to determine whether to request settlement from the useror otherwise delaying the request for payment.

Another aspect of the present disclosure is the content providercomputer providing the paid content based on approval from a paymentsystem, wherein the user device identification is amended based on theidentified referrer of the content causing the payment system to accountthe fee for the content on an account that is specific for combinationof the user device and the referrer.

This SUMMARY is provided to briefly identify some aspects of the presentdisclosure that are further described below in the DESCRIPTION. ThisSUMMARY is not intended to identify key or essential features of thepresent disclosure nor is it intended to limit the scope of any claims.

The term “aspects” is to be read as “at least one aspect.” The aspectsdescribed above and other aspects of the present disclosure describedherein are illustrated by way of example(s) and not limited in theaccompanying drawing.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING

A more complete understanding of the present disclosure may be realizedby reference to the accompanying drawing in which:

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram showing an exemplary data network for adigital content computer server according to aspects of the presentdisclosure;

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating exemplary operations of the contentcomputer server depicted in FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating exemplary operations of a contentcomputer server that is an alternative to the operations depicted inFIG. 3;

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of an exemplary method performed by a contentprovider computer server in accordance with aspects of the presentdisclosure;

FIG. 5 depicts a flowchart of another exemplary method performed by acontent provider computer server implementing other aspects of thepresent disclosure; and

FIG. 6 depicts a flowchart of yet another exemplary method performed bya content provider computer server implementing other aspects of thepresent disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The following merely illustrates the principles of the disclosure. Itwill thus be appreciated that those skilled in the art will be able todevise various arrangements which, although not explicitly described orshown herein, embody the principles of the disclosure and are includedwithin its spirit and scope.

Furthermore, all examples and conditional language recited herein areprincipally intended expressly to be only for pedagogical purposes toaid the reader in understanding the principles of the disclosure and theconcepts contributed by the inventor(s) to furthering the art, and areto be construed as being without limitation to such specifically recitedexamples and conditions.

Moreover, all statements herein reciting principles, aspects, andembodiments of the disclosure, as well as specific examples thereof, areintended to encompass both structural and functional equivalentsthereof. Additionally, it is intended that such equivalents include bothcurrently known equivalents as well as equivalents developed in thefuture, i.e., any elements later developed that perform the samefunction, regardless of structure.

In accordance with aspects of the present disclosure, FIG. 1 depicts anexemplary system network 100 for distributing digital content tointernet-accessible user devices according to aspects of the presentdisclosure. The system network 100 includes an internet-accessiblenetwork 180 accessible by a user device 110, two referrer systems 120and 130, an internet-based merchant system 140 (alternatively referredto herein as “content provider computer server” or “content provider”),and two payment systems 150 and 160. The content provider 140 offersaccess to digital content items 144 and 146.

The user device 110 may, for example, be a personal computer, or amobile processing device, e.g. a mobile phone or tablet. As used herein,“referrer” refers to any system or network of systems that refer a userand/or a user device to the network address of content offered by acontent provider. The referrers 120 and 130 may be single servers orgroups of servers for, search service providers. The referrers may besystems each comprising many single entities interconnected via thenetwork 180 or via other networks. The referrers 120, 130 may comprisecomputer devices, storage devices, data base devices and the like sothat the referrers each are a multitude of entities providing a referralservice to the user device 110 and potentially other devices.

The payment systems 150 and 160 may comprise, for example, one or moreserver computer servers interconnected via the network 180 or othernetworks, which provide the payment service related to this disclosure.

The content provider 140 may be a single server entity controllingaccess to the content item(s) 144 and/or 146 and managing the contentdistribution, or a group of server entities, e.g. server computers andstorage systems connected through a network, which together provideaccess to and manage distribution of the content items 144 and/or 146.

The digital content items 144 and 146 may comprise any type of digitaldata including, for example, pictures, photos, text, video-data,audio-data, speech-audio-data, drawings, maps, plans, construction plan,software and operating instructions, which may be accessible by one ormore user devices, such as the user device 110. The digital contentitems 144 and/or 146 may be accessed by a user device in the form of thecontent provider 140 transmitting such content as a download, or in astreaming manner. The digital content items) 144 and/or 146 may also bein the form of a service, which, in full or in part, may be executed bythe content provider 140 and the results 144 and/146 being transmittedto the user device 110, e.g., as may result from a software-as-a-service(SaaS) offering by the content provider 140.

For the present disclosure, the content items 144 and 146 are offered bythe content provider 140 for a fee payable by the user 110. The contentprovider 110 may implement a paywall to restrict access to the contentitem(s) 144 and/or 146 to users that provide payment for such access.Such paywall may operate, for example, with a payment system. Anexemplary suitable payment system may receive from the content provider140, a billing request that may contain information about the userdevice 110, the corresponding user, the content item 144 or 146requested by the user device 110 and/or the associated fee. Such paymentsystem may request from the user device 110, login or registration ofthe user of the user device 110 and it may request acceptance of the feeor payment of the fee via credit card or other payment means. Thepayment system may then approve the payment or the agreement to pay bytransmitting an approval signal to the content provider 140 who thendelivers the requested content item 144 or 146 to the user device 110.It should be readily understood that the payment system mayalternatively be operated in the same computer server(s) as the contentprovider process for providing access to the content items 144 and 146.

An exemplary payment system useable with a paywall that is particularlyuseful with the systems and methods of the present disclosure is aneasy-access payment system. As used herein, an easy-access paymentsystem is payment system that, for example, does not requireregistration or login by the user or user device, identify the user, or,in some or all instances, overly delay transmission of the content to auser. An exemplary easy-access payment system particularly suitable withthe systems and methods of the present disclosure is described inEuropean patent application publication no. EP2476087, which is herebyincorporated by reference herein in its entirety and which is owned bythe assignee of this patent application. Such easy-access payment systemstores: (a) an identification number of the user device; (b) stores thepurchase amount in relation to the identification number; (c) monitorsthe total amount of purchases of the user device; (d) receives a requestfrom the internet-based content provider to account for the purchaseamount; and (e) sends a request for settlement of at least a part of thetotal amount of purchases to a user of the user device only when thetotal amount of purchases exceeds a predefined value and/or after theexpiry of a predefined time interval.

The content provider 140 may implement or communicate with such aneasy-access payment system for the payment system 150 or 160. In such anembodiment, the content provider 140 may alternatively implement thefunctions of such a payment system so that the content provider 140itself implements the easy-access payment operations. The contentprovider 140 may involve one of more types of payment systems havingdifferent payment and settlement methods. For example, the paymentsystems 150 may be an easy-access payment system, while the otherpayment system 160 may be a legacy payment system requesting a user tologin for payment.

In operation of the system network 100 of FIG. 1, a user may use her/hisuser device 110 may use a search service provider to search for contentby keywords or other search criteria or algorithms. The results of sucha search may be presented on a displayed webpage in the user device 110including, for example, URL addresses or web-links referring to relevantsearch results, including URL addresses for accessing the contentitem(s) 144 and/or 146 offered by the content provider 140.Alternatively, the user device 110 may be referred to the contentprovider 110 by other referrer resources than search result webpages.

As a basis of this disclosure, it is assumed that an entity or entitiesin the network 180 refer the user device 110 to the content provider 140and to a specific content item 144 or 146 managed by the contentprovider 140. FIG. 1 depicts two referrers 150 and 160 that may be anysystem or systems able to provide references, e.g., referring URLaddresses, to the contents 144, 146 of the content provider 140. Forexample, the referrer 150 may be a system of the content provideritself, e.g. a web-server of the content provider referring to thecontent in a table of contents, while the referrer 160 is a third partysearch service not under the content provider's control.

FIG. 2 depicts a method 200 of a communications flow of the systemnetwork 100 implementing particular aspects of this invention. In step210, the user device 110 receives resource information from a referrer120. The resource information may be a web-page or an XML-file forrendering, in step 220, information on a display of the user device 110.The resource information may contain a reference to the content provider140 and the content item 144, e.g., in form of a web-link or an addressin the internet. The resource information may be rendered, e.g.,displayed, on the user device 110, so that the user, in step 230, canactivate the reference, i.e. click on the link or otherwise trigger arequest for the referenced content. An activation of the referral linkmay also be done without user interaction, e.g. autonomously or as aresult of applying pre-defined rules by an application or the operatingsystem of the user device 110. In step 240, the request for the contentitem 144 is transmitted from the user device 110 to the content provider140. The request comprises a referrer identity (“Referrer ID”) of thereferrer 150.

Then, in step 250, the content provider 140 determines, based on thereferrer identity Referrer ID which payment system to apply for thecontent item 144 requested by the user device 110. The determination mayin addition be based on other criteria, e.g. the individual user device110 or the device type, the specific content item 144 or the contenttype.

The determination may consider information, for example, which is notdepicted including, for example, in instances where the referrer is asearch service provider system. In such instances, the search serviceprovider system regularly requests and/or receives content informationfrom the content provider 140 for indexing and providing the indexinformation of the content to the search service, i.e. make the contentsearchable by users of the service. The content provider performed step250 for determining a payment system may be based on whether thereferrer identification Referrer ID matches an identification of asearch service provider system that received the full digital contentitem 144. The content provider 140 could thus select a specific paymentsystem if the referrer identity Referrer ID indicates referral from suchsearch service. The relation between provisioning of content to areferral system and determining a payment service based on a comparisonof the referral system and the received referrer identity. Referrer IDis described in greater detail with regard to FIG. 4.

In an alternative example, the content provider 140 may include paymentsystem 150 and 160 offering multiple kinds of payment methods, e.g.,payment system 150 offering an easy-access payment and payment system160 offering a legacy access payment system. In step 250, the referreridentity Referrer ID may influence the payment system 150 or 160 to beselected. For explanatory purposes only, the payment system 150 will beconsidered an easy-access payment system. As a consequence, the contentprovider 140, in step 260, may request payment or confirm an agreementto later receive payment of the fee for the request for content by theuser device 110 based on the determined easy-access payment system. Thefee may be determined, in whole or in part, based on the referreridentity Referrer ID or be, for example, a fixed amount for all paymentsystems or an amount fixed for certain payment system, but different forother payment systems. The request is transmitted from the contentprovider 140 to the user device 110 which may render the request via itsuser interface to the user.

In response to the user transmitting back to the content provider 140 asignal indicating her/his agreement in step 270, the content provider140 may request billing from a payment system 150 in step 280. Thebilling request may include triggering an establishment of a connectionbetween the user device 110 and the payment system 150. The paymentsystem 150 identifies the user device 110 or parts thereof via theconnection. The content provider 140 may further identify the userdevice or a part of the user device in a user device identity (ID) andprovide this user device identity (ID) to the payment system in abilling request.

The establishment of a connection between the user device 110 and thepayment system 150 and/or the user device identification and provisionof the user device identity (ID) to the payment system 150 mayalternatively be performed by the content provider 140 as a result ofthe determining, for example, that the payment system 150 is aneasy-access payment system. The billing request may also comprise thefee for the requested content item 144 and a description of the contentrequested. The payment system 150 may receive the billing request fromthe content provider 140 and store the fee in relation to the userdevice identity (ID).

If the payment system 150 is an easy-access payment system, it will, instep 285, monitor a total sum of billing requests related to the userdevice identity (ID) that have not been settled and compares this sumwith a preset threshold amount. If the sum exceeds the threshold amount,the payment system 150 will trigger a request for settlement of at leasta part of the total sum from the user associated with the user device110, otherwise no further user interaction occurs for the exemplarytransaction for the content item 144 (as depicted in FIG. 2). Thepayment system 150, in step 290, confirms by transmitting an approvalsignal to the content provider 140, who in turn, in step 295, transmitsthe content item 144 to the user device 110.

FIG. 3 depicts an alternative method 300 of a communications flow forthe system network 100 implementing particular aspects of thisinvention. The steps and sequence of method 300 are similar to themethod 200 depicted in FIG. 2, with certain differences. Specifically,in step 310 of the method 300, the user device 110 receives resourceinformation comprising a referral to the content item 144 from referrer160, which is rendered on the user device 110 in step 320, whichtriggers a request for the content item 144 from the content provider140 in steps 330 and 340, in an identical or substantially similarmanner as steps 210-240 in FIG. 2, In response, the content provider 140determines the referrer identity Referrer ID and selects thecorresponding payment system in step 350 in a similar manner as step 250of FIG. 2. However, in FIG. 3, this selection step selects paymentservice 160 (instead of 150 as in FIG. 2). In this example, the paymentsystem 160 is a conventional payment system and not an easy-accesspayment system.

Accordingly, the payment system 160, in step 360, may require aregistration and/or login of the user of the user device 110 to arrangefor payment. The particular method for such registration and login isnot critical to the present disclosure and may be accomplished usingconventional well-known payment systems methods. After payment has beenmade is step 370, and confirmed by the payment system 160 to the contentprovider 140 in step 380, the content provider 140 transmits therequested digital content to the user device 110 in step 390.

FIG. 4 depicts a flowchart of an exemplary method 400 that may beperformed by the content provider computer server 140 for implementingaspects of the present disclosure. The method 400 starts in step 410,wherein such content provider 140 provides, for example, content item144 to a referral system, such as referrer system 120. The content item144 is provided to the referrer system 120 for the purpose to generatereferences to the content and thus direct users to such content. Thereferrer system 120 may, for example, be an internet-based searchservice or any other service that generates references to the contentreceived from the content provider 140.

Then, at a later time, the content provider 140 may receive a requestfrom a user device, such as user device 110, in step 420, for access tothe content or parts thereof. The request comprises a referrer identityReferrer ID that informs the content provider 140 about which referrersystem 120 or 130 referred the user device 110 to the content. Thereferrer system 120 or 130 may be the content provider itself, i.e. alink on the content provider's web-site referenced the content, or itmay be from a third party system. In the step 430, the content provider140 determines, whether the Referrer ID indicates that the user device110 was referred to the content by the referrer system 120 that receivedthe content in step 410, and if so, the content provider 140 selects,for example, an easy-access payment system in step 440. At such time,the content provider 140 may also determine a fee for the content based,at least in part, on the Referrer ID.

Then, in step 450, the user's confirmation to pay the fee is requestedfor the content and a user device identity (ID) may optionally bedetermined, shown in FIG. 4 with dashed lines because the step ofdetermining the user device identity (ID) may performed alternatively bythe payment system 150 or 160. Further, in step 460, billing of the feefor the content is requested from the easy-access payment system basedon the user device identity (ID) that has been determined by the contentprovider 140 or that is determined by the easy access payment system.

However, if in step 430, the Referrer ID does not indicate the referrersystem 120 as the origin of the referral, another payment system may beselected by the content provider 140 in step 480. As indicated in step480, the selected other payment system may not be an easy-access paymentsystem and thus it may be based on user registration and login. Thecontent provider may then, in step 490, request the user's confirmationfor payment of the fee and further, in step 495, request immediatebilling of the user for the fee from the selected payment system.

FIG. 5 depicts a flowchart of another exemplary method 500 that may beperformed by the content provider computer server 140 for implementingother aspects of the present disclosure. In this embodiment, the contentprovider 140 selects an easy-access payment system for payment of a feefor content with at least one feature of the easy-access payment beingdetermined based on the Referrer ID. Specifically, in step 510, thecontent provider 140 receives a request for the content item 144 from auser device, such as user device 110. The request comprises a referreridentity Referrer ID that informs the content provider about whichreferrer system referred the user device 110 to the content item 144. Instep 520, the user's confirmation for payment of the fee is requestedfor the content item 144 and a user device identity (TD) may bedetermined by the content provider (shown with dashed lines) as step530, or alternatively at a later point in time by the payment system.

Then, in step 540, the content provider 140 determines if the ReferrerID indicates a high priority payment treatment is requested. As usedherein, a high priority payment may be a payment that guarantees aneasy-access payment without the requirement for user. If, in step 540,it is determined that a high priority payment treatment is requested,the method 500 proceeds to step 550, and a bill is transmitted to thepayment system without further interaction from the user and therequested content item 144 is transmitted to the user device 110.However, if in step 540, it is determined that the Referrer ID does notindicate a high priority payment treatment is required, the method 500proceeds to step 560 and billing and payment is requested from thepayment system before transmission of the content item 144 to the userdevice 110 occurs. The triggering of the high priority treatment in FIG.5 may also comprise temporarily increasing the threshold applied by aneasy-access payment system to determine whether to request settlementfrom the user. As a consequence, it is less likely that settlement wouldbe sought by the easy-access payment system prior to transmission of thecontent item 144.

In the alternative, the Referrer ID may include a status of the user orthe user device 110 instead of or in addition to an indicator that highpriority payment treatment is required. Such status of the user or userdevice 110 may be used by the content provider 140 for selection of thepayment system 150 or 160, or determination of the fee for the requesteddigital content.

FIG. 6 depicts a flowchart of yet another method 600 that may beperformed by the content provider computer server 140 according tofurther aspects of the present disclosure. According to the method 600,the content provider 140 selects an easy-access payment system forpayment of a fee for content with at least one aspect of the easy-accesspayment being determined based on the Referrer ID, requested use of areferrer-specific account. In particular, in step 610, the contentprovider 140 receives a request for content item 144 from the userdevice 110. The request comprises a referrer identity Referrer ID thatinforms the content provider 140 which referral system 120 or 130referred the user device 110 to the content item 144. In step 620, theuser's confirmation for payment of the fee is requested for the contentitem 144. The user device identity (ID) may be determined by the contentprovider (shown with dashed lines) as step 630, or alternatively at alater point in time by the payment system.

The content provider 140 then determines, in step 640, whether theReferrer ID identifies a referrer which requires billings to areferrer-specific account for the user device in contrast to an accountthat is only user device specific. As an example, a specific referrercould request the content provider 140 to apply an easy-access paymentsystem with an account that only has to be settled by the user if thesum of purchases of content accessed based on a referrals by the samereferrer exceeds a threshold amount. Accordingly, the content provider140 determines, in step 640, whether a referrer-specific account needsto be applied and if so, it enhances the user device identity (1D)determined by a referrer specific enhancement (RID). Based on theidentity (ID) or (ID)+(RID), billing is requested from the paymentsystem in step 650. However, if in step 640, it is determined that it isnot necessary to provide billing to a referrer specific account for theuser device 110, the method 600 proceeds to step 660, wherein billing ismade to an account that is specific for the user device 110.

REFERENCE CHARACTER TABLE

The following table lists the reference characters and names of featuresand elements used herein: Reference characters assigned to method stepsare not listed.

Ref. char. Feature or element 100 System network 110 User device 120Referral system 1 130 Referral system 2 140 Content provider 144 Digitalcontent 1 146 Digital content 2 150 Payment system 1 160 Payment system2 180 Internet-accessible network

It will be understood that, while various aspects of the presentdisclosure have been illustrated and described by way of example, theinvention claimed herein is not limited thereto, but may be otherwisevariously embodied within the scope of the following claims.

The invention claimed is:
 1. A computer-implemented method for a contentprovider comprising the steps of: a. receiving, over a network, requestinformation from a user device for transmission of specific digitalcontent to said user device, said digital content transmission subjectto a fee, and said request information including information indicativeof a referrer who referred the specific digital content to the userdevice; b. identifying the referrer from the request information; c.selecting, based on the identified referrer, a payment system; d.transmitting to the selected payment system, information indicative ofthe specific digital content and a request for approval of the userdevice for the fee for the specific digital content; and e. facilitatingcommunication between the selected payment system and the user device;f. based on receiving from the selected payment system an approvalsignal, transmitting the requested specific digital content to said userdevice.
 2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein theapproval signal is generated in substantial absence of registration orlogin to the payment system or to the content provider computer serverby a user associated with the user device.
 3. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 1 wherein the approval signal is generated insubstantial absence of identifying a user associated with the userdevice.
 4. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 further comprisingthe step of providing to the identified referrer the specific digitalcontent for indexing, wherein the identified referrer is an internetsearch service.
 5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, whereinthe identified referrer and the content provider have an agreementregarding payment system(s) useable for referred user devices.
 6. Thecomputer-implemented method of claim 1 further comprising the step ofdetermining the fee based at least in part on the identified referrer.7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the step oftransmitting the specific digital content to said user device occursbased on the approval signal in substantial absence of receipt ofpayment for the fee.
 8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1,wherein the step of transmitting a request for approval comprisestransmitting information requesting the payment system to account thefee for the user device without requesting payment of the fee from theuser of the user device for the approval.
 9. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 8, wherein the step of transmitting a request forapproval comprises transmitting information requesting the paymentsystem to account the fee for the user device without requesting paymentof the fee from the user of the user device is based on the receivedinformation indicative of a referrer.
 10. The computer-implementedmethod of claim 1 wherein the information indicative of a referrerfurther includes information indicative of a status of a user associatedwith the user device.
 11. The computer-implemented method of claim 10further comprising the step of determining the fee based at least inpart on the status of the user.
 12. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 1 wherein the selecting step further comprises the steps of: a.Identifying at least two payment systems; b. transmitting to the userdevice information regarding the identified payment systems and arequest for selection of one of the payment systems; and c. receivingfrom the user device a selection information signal indicative of theselected payment system of the one of the identified payment systems.13. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the step oftransmitting a request for approval comprises transmitting informationrequesting the payment system base such approval for a referrer-specificaccount for the user device.
 14. The computer-implemented method ofclaim 1, wherein the step of transmitting a request for approvalcomprises transmitting information requesting the payment system basesuch approval for a referrer-specific account for a user associated withthe user device.
 15. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 furthercomprising the steps of: a. receiving a follow-up request from thepayment system; and b. transmitting to the user device informationindicative of the follow-up request and link to a payment system server.